BBC News – Which are the eurozone’s zombie banks?

Banks are borrowing at 1% from the ECB and then lending the money back to the ECB at 0.25%. Or to put it another way, they are taking a substantial loss on their dealings with the central bank.

Why on earth would they do this?

Well, as I’ve said many times before, it is because they would rather be sure their money is safe and easy to get their mitts on, than take the risk of obtaining a higher interest rate by lending the cash to other banks…..

But actually for me there is a more troubling ECB statistic – which is that eurozone banks last night borrowed 15bn euros overnight from the central bank (and a little less on Monday but a bit more at the end of last week).

Why does this matter?

Well the European Central Bank has just pumped an astonishing amount of new loans into the banking system. And yet there are some banks out there which are still short of cash – and are unable to borrow it from other banks, financial institutions or commercial customers.

via BBC News – Which are the eurozone’s zombie banks?.

Bank-to-bank Euribor rates extend post-ECB cash drop | Reuters

Key euro zone bank-to-bank lending rates continued to drop on Wednesday, pulled down by the ECB’s recent record injection of almost half a trillion euros of ultra-long and ultra-cheap three-year liquidity. Euro zone banks received 489 billion euros late last month in the first of two opportunities to access the long-term loans — operations the ECB hopes will minimise the chances of them responding to the region’s debt crisis by slashing lending.

via Bank-to-bank Euribor rates extend post-ECB cash drop | Reuters.

Big Banks See Better Than 50/50 Odds of QE3 – Real Time Economics – WSJ

Wall Street’s biggest banks expect the Federal Reserve‘s 0% interest rates to persist into at least 2014, and see good odds the Fed will provide additional stimulus to the economy in the near term, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York survey of primary dealers.

…..The median expectation that the Fed could provide additional stimulus in the form of bond buying that would push the balance sheet beyond its current $2.9 trillion level stands at 60% over the year.

via Big Banks See Better Than 50/50 Odds of QE3 – Real Time Economics – WSJ.

The Black Swan of Cairo: How suppressing volatility makes the world less predictable and more dangerous

Complex systems that have artificially suppressed volatility tend to become extremely fragile, while at the same time exhibiting no visible risks. In fact, they tend to be too calm and exhibit minimal variability as silent risks accumulate beneath the surface. Although the stated intention of political leaders and economic policymakers is to stabilize the system by inhibiting fluctuations, the result tends to be the opposite. These artificially constrained systems become prone to “Black Swans” — that is, they become extremely vulnerable to large-scale events that lie far from the statistical norm and were largely unpredictable to a given set of observers.

….Preventing small forest fires can cause large forest fires to become devastating. This property is shared by all complex systems. In the realm of economics, price controls are designed to constrain volatility on the grounds that stable prices are a good thing. But although these controls might work in some rare situations, the long-term effect of any such system is an eventual and costly blowup whose cleanup costs can far exceed the benefits accrued.

….Humans simultaneously inhabit two systems: the linear and the complex. The linear domain is characterized by its predictability and the low degree of interaction among its components which allows the use of mathematical methods that make forecasts reliable. In complex systems, there is an absence of visible causal links between the elements, masking a high degree of interdependence and extremely low predictability. Nonlinear elements are also present, such as those commonly known, and generally misunderstood, as “tipping points.” Imagine someone who keeps adding sand to a sand pile without any visible consequence, until suddenly the entire pile crumbles. It would be foolish to blame the collapse on the last grain of sand rather than the structure of the pile, but that is what people do consistently, and that is the policy error.

The Black Swan of Cairo: How suppressing volatility makes the world less predictable and more dangerous
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Mark Blyth

Colin Twiggs: ~ This is a must read for those who want a deeper understanding of why complex systems fail and why we are continually blind-sided by unforeseen political and economic events.

Romer: Expectations Wallop Needed to Avert 40-Year Recovery

The Federal Reserve should set a “nominal target” for growth in the nation’s gross domestic product that is well above its current low rate for coming out of a recession, said Christina Romer, now an economics professor at the University Of California, Berkeley.“One thing I think it would do is pack a really big expectations wallop,’’ said Romer, speaking at the Super Bowl of Indexing wealth management conference here. “A new operating strategy is something that could really break through and affect people’s behavior.” Such a “new operating strategy” is needed to get the economy on the kind of course normally seen after a recession. In the first nine quarters after the 1982 version, the economy grew at an annual rate of 6.3 percent. In the first nine quarters of this edition, the rate has been 2.4 percent, barely at the nation’s historical rate of growth. And if a new approach is not taken, it could be decades before the nation is back at full employment.

via Romer: Expectations Wallop Needed to Avert 40-Year Recovery.

Did A Large European Bank Almost Fail Last Night? | ZeroHedge

Need a reason to explain the massive central bank intervention from China, to Japan, Switzerland, the ECB, England and all the way to the US? Forbes may have one explanation: “It appears that a big European bank got close to failure last night. European banks, especially French banks, rely heavily on funding in the wholesale money markets. It appears that a major bank was having difficulty funding its immediate liquidity needs. The cavalry was called in and has come to the successful rescue.”

via Did A Large European Bank Almost Fail Last Night? | ZeroHedge.

Central Banks Take Coordinated Action – WSJ.com

WASHINGTON — The world’s major central banks launched a joint action to provide cheap, emergency U.S. dollar loans to banks in Europe and elsewhere, a sign of growing alarm among policy makers about stresses in Europe and in the global financial system. The Fed, ECB and other central banks took coordinated action to support the global financial system as Europe’s rolling debt crisis continues to trouble markets. The coordinated action doesn’t directly address Europe’s government-debt and budget woes. Instead, it is aimed at alleviating the impact of those troubles on global markets. Moreover, it raises the prospect of other steps by central bankers to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis.

via Central Banks Take Coordinated Action – WSJ.com.

NY Fed Issues Mea Culpa That Nobody Saw at 6PM on Black Friday | ZeroHedge

The 3 big reasons the Fed had gotten it wrong:

  1. Misunderstanding of the housing boom. Staff analysis of the increase in house prices did not find convincing evidence of overvaluation (see, for example, McCarthy and Peach [2004] and Himmelberg, Mayer, and Sinai [2005]). Thus, we downplayed the risk of a substantial fall in house prices. A robust approach would have put the bar much lower than convincing evidence.
  2. A lack of analysis of the rapid growth of new forms of mortgage finance. Here the reliance on the assumption of efficient markets appears to have dulled our awareness of many of the risks building in financial markets in 2005-07. However, a March 2008 New York Fed staff report by Ashcraft and Schuermann provided a detailed analysis of how incentives were misaligned throughout the securitization process of subprime mortgages–meaning that the market was not functioning efficiently.
  3. Insufficient weight given to the powerful adverse feedback loops between the financial system and the real economy. Despite a good understanding of the risk of a financial crisis from mid-2007 onward, we were unable to fully connect the dots to real activity until 2008. Eventually, by building on the insights of Adrian and Shin (2008), we gained a better grasp of the power of these feedback loops.

[The author of the NY Fed report] then added that perhaps the biggest reason for the failure was “complacency,” with which I heartily concur, but to which I would also add hubris and stupidity.

via NY Fed Issues Mea Culpa That Nobody Saw at 6PM on Black Friday | ZeroHedge.

Fed Expresses Modest Optimism – WSJ.com

Federal Reserve officials Wednesday refrained from taking new steps to charge up the economy as they expressed some modest optimism about the recovery while they continue to debate ways to bring unemployment down without stoking inflation.Meanwhile, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, in a news conference Wednesday after the Fed announcement, offered little hope for a pickup in U.S. growth after years of economic weakness, saying the pace of progress is “likely to be frustratingly slow.”

via Fed Expresses Modest Optimism – WSJ.com.

Five Challenges facing President Obama

On his inauguration in 2009, Barack Obama inherited a massive headache from the GFC. With unemployment stubbornly above 9 percent, efforts to create new jobs have so far proved futile.

  • Low interest rates from the Fed failed to stimulate new investment. Richard Koo coined the phrase balance-sheet recession to describe private sector reaction to a financial crisis. Low interest rates have as much effect as pushing on a string. Corporations and households alike have no wish to borrow in the face of falling asset prices and erosion of their own balance sheets — and banks have little desire to lend.
  • Quantitative easing failed to lower long-term interest rates and stimulate employment. Instead it revived inflation expectations, creating a surge in commodity prices.
  • The trade deficit widened despite the falling dollar, reflecting an inability of US exports to compete in offshore markets — and a loss of manufacturing jobs as foreign exporters made inroads into US domestic markets.
  • Fiscal stimulus, whether through tax cuts or spending on education or infrastructure not only failed to create sustainable jobs but has left the taxpayer with a mountain of public debt.
  • The home construction industry, a major employer, remains stagnant. Inventories of new and existing homes amount to more than 12 months sales at current rates — when one includes “shadow inventory” of homes repossessed, in foreclosure, or with mortgages delinquent for 90 days or more.

Deflation threat
When the housing bubble collapsed, households and corporates were threatened by falling values and shrinking credit. Savings increased and were used to repay debt rather than channeled through the financial system into new capital investment. A deflationary gap opened up between income and spending: repaying debt does not generate income as new capital investment does. The gap may appear small but, like air escaping from a punctured tire, can cause significant damage to overall income levels as it replays over and over through the economy. The only way to plug the gap is for government to spend more than it collects by way of taxes, but the result is a sharp increase in public debt.

Five point plan
Companies are unwilling to commence hiring until consumption increases — and consumption is unlikely to increase until employment levels rise. The only solution is to create sustainable jobs while minimizing borrowing against future tax revenues.

  1. Stop importing capital and exporting jobs.
    Japan and China have effectively maintained a trade advantage against the US by investing more than $2.3 trillion in US Treasuries. The inflow of funds on capital account acts to suppress their exchange rate, effectively pegging it against the greenback. Imposition of trade penalties would result in tit-for-tat retaliation that could easily escalate into a trade war. Capital flows, however, are already tightly controlled by China and others, so retaliation to capital account controls would be meaningless. Phased introduction of a withholding tax on foreign investments would discourage further capital inflows and encourage gradual repatriation of existing balances over time. Reciprocal access to capital markets could then be negotiated through individual tax treaties.
  2. Clear excess housing inventories.
    Supporting prices at current levels through low interest rates will prevent the market from clearing excess inventory. Stimulating demand through home-buyer subsidies would achieve this but increases public debt and, as Australia discovered, leaves a “shadow” of weak demand if the subsidy is later phased out. Allowing home prices to fall, on the other hand, would clear excess inventory but threaten the banking sector. Shoring up failing banks also requires funding, although this could be recovered over time through increased deposit insurance.
  3. Increase infrastructure spending.
    Infrastructure projects should not be evaluated on the number of jobs created but on their potential to generate future revenue streams. Whether toll roads or national broadband networks, revenue streams can be used to repay public debt. Projects that generate market-related returns on investment also open up opportunities for private sector funding. Spending on education and community assets should not be funded with debt as they provide no viable revenue streams for repayment. The same goes for repairs and maintenance to existing infrastructure — they should be funded out of current tax revenues. Similarly, research and development of unproven technologies with open-ended budgets and uncertain future revenues.
  4. Raise taxes to fund infrastructure investment.
    Raising taxes to repay debt, as FDR discovered in 1937, has the same effect as a deflationary gap in the private sector and shrinks national output. But raising taxes to fund infrastructure investment leaves no deflationary gap and increases the overall level of capital investment — and job creation — within the economy.
  5. Increase austerity.
    Cutting back on government spending merely re-opens the deflationary gap between income and spending. Reducing regular spending in order to free up funds for infrastructure projects, however, would leave no deflationary gap while accelerating job creation within the economy.

Bi-partisan approach
The magnitude and extent of the problems facing the US require a truly bi-partisan approach, unsuited to the rough-and-tumble of a vibrant democracy. Generational changes are required whose impact will be felt long after the next election term. It will take true leadership to forge a broad consensus and set the US on a sound path for the future.

Published in the November issue of Charter magazine.